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Gulf of Maine Research Institute Awarded a NASA ESPCoR Cooperative Agreement to Model the Impact of Climate Change on the Gulf of Maine Fisheries

June 27, 2014

Dr. Andrew Pershing, Chief Science Officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) and his colleagues at GMRI and Dr. Nicholas Record at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences were awarded a three-year, $743,544 cooperative agreement from NASA EPSCoR through the Maine Space Grant Consortium to model the impact of climate change on Gulf of Maine fisheries. Their project will advance ecological forecasting and deliver forecast information that will be critical for supporting climate change adaptation in natural resource management. The types of forecasts we will be developing will enable resource managers and industry participants to make proactive decisions as they strive to sustain businesses, industries, and economies in the context of climate change. Lessons learned from the immediate applications of this work to fisheries in the Gulf of Maine will have broad national relevance as resource-based industries increasingly confront the challenges of operating in changing and no-analog conditions. The infrastructure developed through this project—including information technology, the algorithmic framework, and scientific capacity of early career scientists—will provide a strong foundation for future work and will establish this team as regional and national leaders in marine ecological forecasting. Assisting the project team will be Dr, Edward Armstrong from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Click here to read the abstract.